Empowering Pakistani Women through Financial Inclusion and Economic Growth

The aim of this project was to create decent employment and income for 3000 women sales agents known as “JazzCash GuddiBajis” across 10 districts in Pakistan and expand the financial inclusion of women in the country. In this project, RSPN recruited and trained the female sales agents, Unilever provided support and supplied the sales agents with fast-moving consumer goods, Jazz offered access to finance through their JazzCash application, and Bopinc brought expertise in developing inclusive business models with micro-entrepreneurs. 

Upon completion, the project had successfully trained 3,000 women to become Unilever sales agents, unfortunately, only 378 of these were also able sell JazzCash digital financial services. During the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, 68% and 84% of these women, respectively, were actively selling Unilever products. However, the developed model, depended too much on the continued involvement of the non-commercial partner RSPN. Following the end of the DMDP project, the partners have not been able to agree on continuing the collaboration and consequently, Unilever had to re-strategise their last-mile distribution model. Unilever expects to reach 2000 to 4000 sales agents within the coming years. 

As of November 2023, RSPN reported that 71% of the women (2,140) continued to thrive as micro-entrepreneurs within RSPN-funded programmes, encouraging community members to access reproductive health services.